Maggie's Farm

It goes against against my instinct, judgement, taste, and sense of proportion to do a Christmas post before Thanksgiving, but I couldn't resist this bizarro Dylan offering. (All money from Dylan's Christmas record goes to charity.)

Remain strange and unpredictable, Bob. We like you that way. This is a good Minnesota Polka:

A reader had good seats for Dylan in Boston last night (he did the amazing Every Grain of Sand, I am told):

A friend of mine was on the set for that 1973 movie, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. He asked somebody who the weird, silent guy on the set was with his head covered with a sweatshirt hood or a hat, always sitting under a tree with a guitar. He was told "Oh, that's Bob Dylan." My friend, a Dylan fan, decided to leave the guy alone because he did not exactly appear to welcome interaction.

The first live performance of "Billy," March 2009. I like the age in this old voice:

Several views of the Bob Dylan Christmas album at Walking. I think Bob just does what he feels like doing, with a healthily quirky, inner-directed take it or leave it attitude. But I might be wrong.

Toon via S,C&A:

It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry. Dylan's great song performed by Jerry Garcia, 1985:

Where are you tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) 1978. The remarkable lyrics are on the video.

Just found out Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour has finished its 100-piece series.

It can be found on line, though, and in reruns on Sirius. It's enjoyable, with a great selection of old tunes.

Every Grain of Sand (1981)

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other time it's only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Here's Emmylou Harris singing it:

The horny, raunchy but appreciative Going to Acapulco, from the 1967 practice Basement Tapes with The Band (which were never meant to be publicly heard). Lyrics here, but he doesn't always stick to the lyrics - Dylan often invents new ones as he sings.

All profits from this record will go to charity. While I understand Dylan's respect for Christmas - and for the Great American Songbook in general, I'm not sure about this (h/t, Right Wing Bob, who has posted a bit about this record):

"Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse
An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing."

Chimes of Freedom, 1964. Lyrics here.

It's a heck of a line-up, but, still, Bob does it best alone. For you youngsters, this song was Bob's Goodbye to "causes," and his Hello to the heart and soul. McGuinn's guitar dominates.

"I could be unravelin'
Wherever I'm travelin'
even to foreign shores..."

From 1985's under-appreciated album Empire Burlesque. Tune here (embedding is disabled).

Shelter from the Storm lyrics here. It begins:

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Here's a good version from the 1976 Rolling Thunder tour:

Dylan questioned by cops in NJ. Yes, the Jersey shore. Police said they had a report of "a stranger wandering around and looking into a vacant house in a rainstorm." Yup, that would be Bob. The mystery tramp.

Note that he did not say "Don't you know who I am?"

This is 1966 in England:

The Dylanologist and I used to joke about the notion of a Bob Dylan Christmas album.

But what's up with this?

Related, Dylan reciting The Night Before Christmas on his Theme Time Radio Show.

This is 1974. It sounds like a studio rehearsal tape. No video.

I am referring to CT's Sen. Chris Dodd.

Here's Dylan with the relevant (wonderful) song, Duncan and Brady. Too bad he messes up the verses, but who can keep 1000 lyrics in his head?

"I got the pork chops, she got the pie,
She ain't no angel and neither am I."

Some bonus Bob for thunderstorm season. Sorry, but it's not embeddable: Thunder on the Mountain.

With The Band, 1976:

"They're selling postcards of the hanging..." The recorded version of Desolation Row from Highway 61 Revisited, with good photos:

A soulful traditional song (lyrics here).

Not embeddable, but a good tune about desire for a prostitute. Fun video too. 1993. 

Newport, 1965

Oh, help me in my weakness
I heard the drifter say
As they carried him from the courtroom
And were taking him away
"My trip hasn't been a pleasant one
And my time it isn't long
And I still do not know
What it was that I've done wrong.

Well, the judge he cast his robe aside
A tear came to his eye
"You failed to understand", he said
"Why must you even try ?"
Outside the crowd was stirring
You could hear it from the door
Inside the judge was stepping down
While the jury cried for more.

"Oh, stop that cursed jury"
Cried the attendant and the nurse
"The trial was bad enough
But this is ten times worse"
Just then a bolt of lightning
Struck the courthouse out of shape
And while ev'rybody knelt to pray
The drifter did escape.

Best version I've heard of the song, except for maybe the one Bob and Jerry did together. This from the mid-90s, no video.

I don't think we posted this already, but maybe we did. This interview was with MTV producer Bill Flanagan in anticipation of the release of Dylan's Together Through Life in April.

Bob is a smart man and always interesting, especially when discussing music.

Parts 1-3 together here.

Part 4 here.

Part 5 here.

Once small excerpt:

BF: Have you ever tried to fit in?

BD: Well, no, not really. I'm coming out of the folk music tradition and that's the vernacular and archetypal aesthetic that I've experienced. Those are the dynamics of it. I couldn't have written songs for the Brill Building if I tried. Whatever passes for pop music, I couldn't do it then and I can't do it now.

BF: Does that mean you create outsider art? Do you think of yourself as a cult figure?

BD: A cult figure, that's got religious connotations. It sounds cliquish and clannish. People have different emotional levels. Especially when you're young. Back then I guess most of my influences could be thought of as eccentric. Mass media had no overwhelming reach so I was drawn to the traveling performers passing through. The side show performers - bluegrass singers, the black cowboy with chaps and a lariat doing rope tricks. Miss Europe, Quasimodo, the Bearded Lady, the half-man half-woman, the deformed and the bent, Atlas the Dwarf, the fire-eaters, the teachers and preachers, the blues singers. I remember it like it was yesterday. I got close to some of these people. I learned about dignity from them. Freedom too. Civil rights, human rights. How to stay within yourself. Most others were into the rides like the tilt-a-whirl and the rollercoaster. To me that was the nightmare. All the giddiness. The artificiality of it. The sledge hammer of life. It didn't make sense or seem real. The stuff off the main road was where force of reality was. At least it struck me that way. When I left home those feelings didn't change.

BF: But you've sold over a hundred million records.

BD: Yeah I know. It's a mystery to me too.

High Water (for Charlie Patton)

MSG, NYC, 1992

Bob and Willie: Pancho and Lefty, at Nelson's 60th Birthday Party

The words of Blind Willie McTell begin:

Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, "This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem."
I traveled through East Texas
Where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell.

Dylan on piano:

This superb song was an outtake from his album Modern Times. I love it. Lyrics here:

From the Rolling Stone review of Dylan's new record:

...as a young folk singer, he strained to sound older and more sorely tested than he was, as if he had known Charley Patton, A.P. Carter and the Great Depression firsthand. He's finally there, with an authentically pitted instrument ideally suited to the devastated settings of these songs and the rusted desert-shed production (by Dylan under his usual pseudonym, Jack Frost): brushed-snare strolls and bar-band shuffles; bag-of-snakes guitars, with frequent stinging fills by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; the rippled sigh and mocking laugh of an accordion icing most songs, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. Compared to the Western-swing-like buoyance of Love and Theft and the Fifties-Chess-session air of Modern Times, this record sounds like it was cut in the dead-end Mexican border town in Orson Welles' 1958 film noir, Touch of Evil, especially when Dylan gets to lines like the closing few in "Forgetful Heart," a musky blend of banjo, dirty guitar and utter emotional defeat: "All night long/I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain/The door has closed forevermore/If indeed there ever was a door."

From Mark Edwards at TimesOnline, who begins:

Bob Dylan fans are in for a treat. The man’s new album, Together Through Life, will be released on April 27. Before that, Dylan begins the latest instalment of the Never-Ending Tour at Sheffield Arena on Friday; and Thursday sees the publication of Revolution in the Air, a new book by the man The New York Times described as “the only Dylanologist worth reading”, Clinton Heylin.

Another one from Dylan's new record: Feel a Change Coming On.

Beyond Here Lies Nothin', from his new record Together Through Life (audio only):

From the Dylan interview last week re life in general, and his new record:

BF: Are you a mystical person?

BD: Absolutely.

BF: Any thoughts about why?

BD: I think it’s the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I‘m more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

BF: But the album is all about love – love found, love lost, love remembered, love denied.

BD: Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

The Jerry Garcia Band with Dylan's song (h/t, Env. Repub):

Dylan's first live performance of 1972's "Billy," in Stockholm last week (March 22, 2009). It's Billy the Kid. Lyrics here. Audio only. He goes into that stacatto singing he's been doing this year: it's like a tic.

From Stockholm, March 22, 2009. Lyrics here.

Minneapolis, 1998. It's a Maggie's Farm theme song. Lyrics here.

"I looked at my watch, I looked at my wrist.
I punched myself in the face with my fist.
I took my potatoes down to be mashed,
then I made it on over to that million dollar bash."

I thought the song was a bit of a spoof about Woodstock, but who knows? Dylan with The Band, on the Basement Tapes (which were just fooling-around practice tapes):

Video of a studio rehearsal, with Mark Knopfler and his band. Again, no date or place. 70s for sure. It's a lovely tune:

When the Deal Goes Down, from Modern Times (2006). I think we posted this one in the past, but it's been on my mind -

"Well, I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's saying it's true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down."

It's not embeddable, but it's worth listening to. The video isn't bad either.

Today's Free Advt for Bob is a good piece for Lent, I think. Dylan's song is like a Psalm.

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

If you don't care for Dylan, here's Emmy Lou Harris' cover of the song: you will like this. 1995.

with the Grateful Dead. I don't know the year or place. It begins like this:

Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can't help but wonder what's happening to my companions
Are they lost or are they found, have they counted the cost it'll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they're gonna have to abandon ?
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.

I had a woman down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
She said, Boy, without a doubt, have to quit your mess and straighten out
You could die down here, be just another accident statistic
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.

Full lyrics here.

Bob with the Dean Martin classic. Not sure when this was done. Good photos:

Those photos of Florence, Alabama moved me to post this, a Dylan cover of the Grateful Dead's Alabama Getaway from 1997. I heard Dylan do this great song in New Haven around that time. Same band. He had so much incense or smoke or whatever he uses that you could barely see the band through it. And he did shake hands or slap hands with everybody up front, too. I do remember that he opened with a rousing  Crash on the Levee that night, and did an acoustic set too including Girl from the North Country.

My theory is that he always likes to keep his band off balance and challenged. I do not think that they rehearse. Dylan was playing some interesting electric at this time.

Lyrics here.